Cord Tissue May Be Used To Treat Burn Victims

Cryo-Cell strongly encourages our clients to not only enroll in our superior cord blood banking service but to also take advantage of the once in a lifetime opportunity to cryopreserve their baby’s cord tissue stem cells at birth as well. By collecting and processing a 4-8 inch segment from the whole umbilical cord, Cryo-Cell is able to cryopreserve the optimal sample size and composition without selecting and discarding valuable cell types. Because the metabolic effects and mechanisms of action of each type of cell within the umbilical cord is relatively unknown, Cryo-Cell has instituted a proprietary protocol to retain a large, diverse population of these cells.

New skin for burn victims

A new study by the University of Granada 1 revealed an innovative method of generating skin cells from stem cells found within cord tissue. Not only does the use of cord tissue stem cells to generate skin cells have the potential to facilitate patching up open wounds, but it could also transform treatment and rehabilitation for burn victims.

The study shows that cord tissue mesenschymal stem cells can be converted into two primary types of human tissue. The regeneration method involves taking stem cells extracted from umbilical cord tissue, combining them with biomaterial made of fibrin and agarose and then culturing them to differentiate and grow into skin cells. Although this new regeneration method will likely be used in many clinical purposes, researchers believe that burn victims will benefit the most. Currently, major-burn victim care is limited by the amount of time that it takes to grow new tissue. The current treatments use artificial skin grown from the patient’s own healthy tissue; however, this process has the major drawback of taking several weeks. In contrast, skin cells derived from cord tissue stem cells could theoretically be grown and stored in tissue banks before the cells are ever needed. Then, in the event of a serious burn injury, it could be used upon demand resulting in a much quicker recovery.

The potential, regenerative capacity of umbilical cord tissue stem cells is enormous. Earlier this year, the same institution published a study where they used mesenschymal cord tissue stem cells to generate artificial bone tissue.